Keep the Property at the Center of the Conversation

In NAR’s 2011 Buyer and Seller Survey, we took away a number of very powerful insights regarding buyer behavioral trends and how MRIS can better equip our customers to meet and exceed the market’s demands for services and information.

One learning was that people today simply put the property address into Google (Bing, Yahoo! and other lesser search engines) and then, based on the paid and organic results, they will follow links produced on the page to whatever website catches their attention. This could be the broker’s or agent’s website or one of the many consumer portals (Zillow, Trulia, etc.) or the MLS consumer website, in our case HomesDatabase.com.

So I read with great interest a post from our friends at Property Portal Watch titled “Google Increases the Importance of Social Media” by Bill Hacker. He reports the following:

“Among the 22 ranking factors identified, social signals account for five of the six most influential factors in Google’s search results, according to a June 2012 study from Searchmetrics. The study showed that the most influential factors were:

Facebook shares (0.37) have the highest correlation

Followed by number of backlinks (0.36).

Other high-ranking factors include Facebook comments (0.33) and,

Likes (0.3), and Tweets (0.25).

A number of factors display a negative correlation with Google rankings, including title character length (-0.04) and the position of title keywords (-0.05).” He closes with this powerful prediction:

“It is no surprise that Google is placing more, and more weight on social media, i.e. what viewers are ‘liking.’ It’s a trend that is not likely to change but to accelerate in the coming years. We live in a digital city where, what our neighbors think matter and that will change to a digital village soon. Portals need to be prepared to take advantage of these new developments, or be left behind.”

This is why MRIS is working full-time to keep the REALTOR® at the center of the conversation and, also to learn how property listing can best be promoted and marketed in today’s real-time world.